With the recent NYT article on Amazon’s culture in the news (see our thoughts here) we thought employee experience and culture would be a fitting theme for our August blog round-up. There has always been a big focus on customer experience. We have always advocated that the employee experience is just as valuable.

There is a lot that goes into crafting an engaging employee experience and culture across an organization. Read our August round-up for some inspiration on strategies for creating an engaging employee experience and company culture. When you get the company culture right, great customer service and business performance will happen. Explore how 10 company cultures worth crushing on (yoga classes and unlimited vacations? yes, please!) and the importance of how marketing and HR need to work more closely together.

CMOs, Meet Your New Best Friend: The CHRO Marketing and HR Need to Work More Closely Together—By Greg Monaco, @gregmonaco
“In today’s highly competitive business environment, HR must align with overall company branding to fight the massive talent war. Marketing must leverage every last employee as a company advocate to the outside world. Operating in a vacuum won’t drive excitement for your organization, but symbiosis will.Apple has achieved many milestones in its nearly 40-year history, and scores of business books have focused on its many unprecedented marketplace milestones. But the one critical piece of Apple’s history that may be overlooked by companies big and small is the connective tissue that must exist between brand and employee.The additive benefits are immeasurable, but palpable. From an employee engagement perspective, aligning brand and employee diminishes internal friction, because every last corner of the company acts with shared purpose. From a marketing perspective, aligning brand and employee helps to create what many have described in marketing as the “multiplier effect,” or one plus one equals three. Your employees become your best advocates to the outside world.”

Lack of strategy and skills shortage ‘to have greatest impact on internal comms’ One in three internal comms leaders believe an unhealthy obsession with talking tactics instead of strategy will have the greatest impact on the future of the discipline.
—By John Harrington @John_Harring
“The lively debate was billed as a “fight club” between the four panellists: PRWeek deputy editor John Harrington; Claire Lucraft, a senior internal comms consultant who formerly worked at KPMG, BBC and Cadbury’s Schweppes; Paul Riddell, head of strategic comms at AXA Wealth, and Annabel Dunstan, co-founder of Question & Retain. It was chaired by Liam Fitzpatrick, managing partner of Working Strategies.”

10 Examples of Companies With Fantastic Cultures
—By Sujan Patel @sujanpatel
“Having great company culture is no longer just an option. Today’s workers consider it as much as they consider salary and benefits. In fact, fantastic company culture is almost expected along with other traditional benefits. While the culture that works for one company might not work for another, you can learn a lot from companies who are doing it right, and get started on company culture hacks of your own.”

Shona is responsible for Vignette’s marketing practice, covering everything from agency brand aesthetics to positioning, managing the agency’s web and social presence, content marketing/blog, and supports business development’s needs. Shona began her career as a designer, managing a boutique design studio that specialized in hand-crafted brand identities for clients in both the US and Europe. She worked with clients to transform their vision into reality with creative solutions from brand identity to custom website design, digital marketing, and print collateral. Shona’s experiences as a creative influences her approach to marketing, using data-driven methodologies to deliver authentic brand experiences. Shona is an active member of the Portland design community and has served on the board as Communications Director of the Portland chapter of AIGA and a founding member of Branding Salon, a consortium of brand, design, development and marketing professionals.

We know one thing for sure. We’re only as good as the talent on our team. That’s why we take finding great people so seriously. If working in a fast-paced, team-based culture, and being creative all the time is who you are—reach out. We want to meet you!

Tell us about your projects, task us with solving a problem, or ask us to help you plan the future of your brand communications. We’d be delighted to show you how far we can engage your employees to drive your business.

Tell us about your projects, task us with solving a problem, or ask us to help you plan the future of your brand communications. We’d be delighted to show you how far we can engage your employees to drive your business.